


Nearly's Birthday Fic

by taylor_tut



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Drug Withdrawal, Gen, Hurt Klaus Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves Whump, Protective Diego Hargreeves, Protective Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy), Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 10:05:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18776080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taylor_tut/pseuds/taylor_tut
Summary: Nearly, IT’S YOUR BIRTHDAY!!!! I hope it’s as wonderful and spectacular as you are!!! <3 here is a fic for you. I hope you like it!the super special birthday request was for Klaus being found (by Diego and Five!) in the motel after he’s kidnapped by Hazel and Cha-Cha. Please enjoy this short lil AU scene!





	Nearly's Birthday Fic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nearly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nearly/gifts).



"Could you hit more potholes?" Five asked sarcastically and irritably. "It's like you're swerving for them." 

Diego rolled his eyes at not the first complaint his brother had made about his driving since they'd gotten into the car together. 

"You're just sensitive because you're hungover," he dismissed, now intentionally jerking the steering wheel to hit a divot in the road and smirking in self-satisfaction when he saw Five's face go green from the corner of his eye. 

"Is this the place?" Diego asked, looking out at the seemingly very normal-looking motel.

"That's what your friend said," Five said confidently, wasting no time throwing the door of the car open and hopping out. He'd always been difficult to keep up with for obvious reasons, but lately, with the stakes as high as they were now, his laser-focus had made him even quicker. Diego hurried, perhaps a little pettily, to walk in front of Five and lead the way into the motel. After a quick, threatening chat with the front desk attendant, they had a room number and were heading upstairs. 

"I can't believe you didn't even notice he was gone," Five accused. 

Diego bristled. "He's only been gone less than two days," Diego said defensively, mostly because he knew Five was right. "And Klaus is like that. Sometimes he just disappears."

"You noticed that I'd disappeared," Five said, "and I've been gone over fifteen years, your time." 

Well, he didn't really have a rebuttal for that, now did he? 

"This is the room," Five continued. Diego picked the lock quickly and without a word, throwing the door open with the kind of dramatic flare that could only come from a 30 year old man in a spandyx crime-fighting suit. Knives raised and with Five hovering closely behind him, Diego rounded the corner of the doorway to find—

—Nothing. An empty room. 

"Hazel, Cha-Cha," Five called, demanded. 

No answer.

"Show yourself now and nobody gets hurt," Diego tried. Again, not a peep from the motel room. Five looked at him inquisitively. 

"Do you think your buddy got the room wrong?" he asked. 

"Maybe," Diego replied. "Or maybe it was some kind of setup—"

"—Wait, shut up a second."

"You asked me a question."

"Do you hear that?"

Diego quieted, straining to hear whatever Five was talking about, and when he did, his blood ran cold. A faint whimpering sound was coming from the closet. 

More quickly than Diego thought he'd ever done anything in his life, he tore the closet doors open and felt his heart sink. 

"Klaus," he breathed, taking a moment to scan his brother up and down. Klaus was slumped in a chair, completely naked, save for a cloth over his lap, and bloody from head to toe. There were bruises, dark ones, over every inch of skin he could see and his hair was matted to his forehead with what had once been sweat, but had long-since dried, which meant that he was probably dehydrated. 

"Jesus, Klaus," Five muttered, which seemed to get his attention. Probably, the door had been opened so many times in the past day and a half that Klaus had stopped even looking up when it did because he knew exactly who to expect and had lost hope that it would be anyone other than Hazel or Cha-Cha on the other end.  

He flinced at the meager light from the room and the duct tape over his mouth began to puff in and out as his breathing picked up into a frantic near-sob. 

"He's claustrophobic," Diego muttered as he began to cut the ties around Klaus' wrists carefully. 

"And afraid of the dark," Five added as he roughly ripped the duct tape away from his mouth. 

"Thank you," Klaus fumbled over his words as he struggled to stay upright in the chair without the restraints, "thank you." 

"Woah, hey," Diego muttered, catching him by the shoulders as he threatened to topple to one side. His eyes went wide at the heat he felt beneath his hands. "He's burning up," he said lowly to Five, who simply nodded. 

"Detox?"

"Probably," Diego agreeed. Five shrugged out of his blazer and put it around Klaus' shoulders. It was comically small, but he clung to it, anyway. 

"Thank you," he said again, and Five shook his head. 

"Enough," he dismissed, having the gall to sound almost irritated at the desperate gratitude of a man who probably had spent the last 36 hours thinking he was going to die in a tiny closet, inhabited by ghosts only he could see, and being tortured by information he didn't have. 

"What the hell did they want with you?" Diego asked, but Klaus shook his head, looked pointedly at Five, then back at Diego as if to say "I'll tell you when the Boy isn't around." However, Five was perceptive enough to read through the lines.

"Me," he replied. "They wanted to know where I was." 

Diego didn't have the time to deal with whatever guilt Five was about to feel about the fact that the answer was, "drunk in a library with my half-mannequin wife while the rest of you cleaned up my messes." 

"Can you stand?" Diego asked Klaus, refocusing on the mission at hand. Even without the mask to block out his peripherals, all the siblings could, at the drop of a hat, refashion the metaphorical blinders that Reginald had taught them to wear when shit hit the fan, blocking out anything that wasn't directly relevant to their objective. 

Klaus, to his credit, tried, which spoke volumes about how much pain he was in. He knew that the alternative would be that Diego would have to carry him out, and normally he'd jump at that opportunity, but God, would it hurt. 

Two steps forward had him collapsing into a whimpering, hyperventillating heap, unable to put any pressure at all on his feet. Five lifted one up and grimaced so hard that Diego thought that he might actually get sick. 

"They cut the bottoms of his feet," Five announced solemnly, angrily.

"Fuck," Diego muttered. "For a pair of hired guns, they really seem to enjoy what they do." 

Normally, if Diego was going to carry one of his siblings, he'd do it on his back to save them both a little bit of dignity, but Klaus' front was so tattered that there was no way that was going to happen. 

"I'm sorry, Klaus, but I'm gonna have to pick you up," Diego warned. He didn't know what he was expecting, but he was still a little surprised when Klaus seemed to steel himself before nodding. 

"Okay," he replied. He whimpered and bit back cries as Diego lifted him princess-style and didn't make a joke once there, simply let his too-warm face rest against Diego's chest. It was strange to see him so docile and quiet, and it made him even more worried than he already felt. 

"Grace will fix him up," Five promised, but Diego shook his head. 

"That's, uh, not gonna be possible," he said. Klaus looked troubled and Diego didn't have the heart to tell him that their mom was dead, too, on top of everything. "Don't worry," he reassured instead. "We've got you." 

Though Klaus probably wasn't any more confident in accepting that statement than Diego was in making it, he didn't seem to have the energy to argue with it, instead opting to close his eyes and just be glad that he wasn't in that god-awful closet anymore and that the next time he opened his eyes, it would be to his siblings rather than to another wet washrag over his face.

 


End file.
